Schieffer: Congress not giving us our money's worth

(CBS News) There was this guy who loved to talk about guns, and when he couldn't figure out any other way to work guns into the conversation, he would say, "I think I heard a gunshot ! Uh, speaking of guns . . . " and off he'd go on his favorite subject.

With brings me to Congress, where House Republicans did THEIR favorite thing last week, virtually their only thing lately.

For the 33rd time, they voted to repeal all or part of the health care law, knowing that the action is meaningless because the Senate would never go along.

Now mind you, this is no endorsement of the new health care law. We need health care reform, but I'm a long way from believing the president's plan was the best way to go about it.

My beef is that Congress can't figure out how to do ANYTHING but vote on this one issue - over and over, day after day.

Hey guys, we hear you, we take your point. But the way I heard it, government is there to improve the lives of citizens.

You seem to believe all this repetitious blather will help you raise campaign money. Maybe so, but it's hard for me to see how it helps anyone else.

The best estimates are that Congress wasted a total of two full work weeks - 80 hours - voting on this ONE thing.

According to the Congressional Research Service, it costs US millions of dollars a week to operate the House of Representatives - staff salaries, mail services, cafeterias, all of that - and we're not even including paying the capital costs.

You do the numbers. Do you think we're getting our money's worth when they spend two weeks voting on the same thing over and over again?

I think they can do better.